In the novel To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, Atticus teaches his kids many lessons. One of them is “If you just learn a single trick, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. ” This is Atticus’s way of teaching his kids that you cannot judge people without knowing them from the inside out and that there is always more than how you view a person from the outside.
This trick especially helps his daughter, Scout. In the beginning of the novel, the lesson applies to Scout, Jem, and Dill when they are playing the Boo Radley game. They heard many rumors about Boo Radley and what he has been doing all these years inside his house. Then whenever creepy stuff happened to them, they blamed it on Boo Radley. Atticus reminds them that he is just a quiet man, who minds his own business inside his house and that there has been no proof of harming anyone all these years.
Although the kids still want to see Boo Radley, Atticus’s lesson makes them have more respect for Mr. Radley. And when they realize he must’ve sewn Jem’s pants back and put a blanket over them when they were outside freezing while watching the fire, they try to stop playing their game. Another situation that Atticus’s lesson applies to is with Scout. When she begins school and is able to read it and write it makes her teacher, Mrs. Caroline aggravated which almost makes Scout want to drop out of the first grade. But when Atticus shows Scout what it is like for Mrs.
Caroline she has more respect for her. He tells her that Mrs. Caroline is knew to Maycomb county and the teaching system, so Scout’s advancement threw her lesson off and frustrated her. Then when Scout, has to inform her teacher about the Ewell’s and how they only go to school on the first day, and how the Cunningham’s do not take anything because they cannot pay anyone back is embarrassing for the teacher to have to find out from her students. This gives Scout a more positive outlook on her class and stops her from wanting to drop out of the first grade.
This trick helped Scout throughout the rest of the novel as well. I have learned many lessons from my parents as well. One of which, if you someone is bothering you and making you feel bad, don’t let them know it is bothering you and just walk away. This advice has helped me a lot in middle school and now in high school because there is always going to be someone who doesn’t like you and you have to just let it go. I’ve also found that just walking away is the best thing to do when you want to make a point but not start any conflict with words.
I learn this lesson more and more as I meet new people and I’m sure it will always be very useful, even when I become an adult. Atticus’s lesson to his kids and my parent’s advice to me are very similar because they are both ways to get along with people better. In my situation and in the story it takes a couple of times to fully understand advice and too apply it to real situations but once you do you, it will be a lesson you will always refer to and been fortunate enough to learn while you were young.
